Our Criminal-In-Chief
That's how it's sounding. Apparently, the mysterious leaks came straight from the top, despite President Bush's strong words about going after leakers. R. Jeffrey Smith writes in The Washington Post:

The White House did not challenge the prosecutor's account of Bush's and Cheney's role in orchestrating the effort to discredit Wilson yesterday. Both Bush and Cheney have been interviewed by Fitzgerald, but the details of what they told him are unknown. Fitzgerald's new account is based on Libby's grand jury testimony that Cheney told him Bush had authorized the declassification and disclosure of some of the information.

Bush has been a major critic of leaks of classified information, and his aides have repeatedly said they want to "get to the bottom" of who leaked the name of Wilson's wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, to the media, which touched off Fitzgerald's investigation . But in the past 33 months the White House has never disclosed Bush's apparent involvement in the deliberate disclosure of information meant to undermine Wilson.

Three months before Fitzgerald began his probe in December 2003, Bush said at a news conference that "I've constantly expressed my displeasure with leaks, particularly leaks of classified information. . . . If there's a leak out of the administration, I want to know who it is. And if a person has violated law, the person will be taken care of."

Did anyone take this to mean that the Administration was going to turn of their phones and not exchange information with political intent?

> Cheney told him Bush had
> authorized the declassification
> and disclosure of some of the
> information.

Presidents can declassify stuff. It's OK by me if doing so exposed Wilson as unreliable and renegade.

This 'scandal' continues to work only as blood-pressure fodder for Democrats: It's not gonna get traction with anyone else. We're a third of the way into 2006, and Democrats are still complaining about partisan conduct in the same way that early football teams were annoyed by the forward pass. It's EMBARRASSING. It makes them seem NAIVE.